Introduction

In this portfolio the following playlists from Spotify are used: ‘All Out 80s’, ‘All Out 90s’, ‘All Out 2000s’ and ‘All Out 2010s’. These playlists were made by Spotify and together they contain the 600 biggest songs from 1980 until 2020. It is very interesting to see how taste in (and production of) music can change in these years. Therefore, the four playlists will be compared to each other to find the differences and similarities in the biggest songs over time. I expect the genres of the songs to mostly be pop, r&b/hip-hop and rock, since these are on average the most popular genres. However, the popularity of each genre might change over the years. It will interesting to see how several track-level features of hit songs have changed over the years, such as loudness, popularity or energy.

The playlists were made by Spotify themselves, meaning the playlists are probably quite representative of the years that Spotify was in use (since 2008). But it might not be as representative for the earlier years, since they might have just included songs that were ‘timeless’, meaning they were most listened to after 2008 and not in their own time. A few songs from the corpus stand out. For example, ‘Wicked Game’’ from Chris Isaak, since this song is quite a lot slower than the other songs. The songs that are most typical for the time periods (playlists) are their most popular songs.

Increase of loudness, energy and explicit language use in hit songs over the years

In this graph, it can be seen that the loudness of hits has significantly increased since 1980. This phenomenon is also called the ‘loudness race’. Since loudness can range between -60 and 0 db, it is very interesting to see that none of the hit songs have a loudness below -20.

It is also obvious that there is a correlation between loudness and energy of the music. Here, energy ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity. This graph shows that, as the loudness increases, so does the energy. Lastly, there is an obvious increase in the use of explicit language (the blue dots) in songs over the years. The increased loudness, energy and use of explicit language might have an effect on the popularity of the tracks in these playlists.

Use of key in the playlists

In this graph, the use of keys over the playlists can be seen. In the 80’s C was the most used and D# the least. In the 90’s B was the most used and again D# the least. In 2000’s the F is most used and G# the least. IN 2010’s, C# was most used and D# the least. Over all, the use of D# is the lowest with only 12 songs. So this key is not used a lot in the biggest hits. The use of C# is the highest with 70 songs, which means that it is a very popular key for the creation of hitsongs.

Chromagram of the least loud song: Wicked Game

Since hits have gotten louder during the years and also more popular. Then it is interesting to look at why less loud songs end up to be a hitsong. This chromagram shows the chroma features of Wicked Game by Chris Isaak. Wicked Game is known as a soft rock song from the 90’s and is performed in a sorrowfully conflicted, brooding tone. This song is the least loud song in the corpus (-18.090) and also has low energy (0.296).

As can be seen in the chromagram, the song is mostly in B and E key, expect for the parts when it changes to F# (230s - 270s) and C# (190s - 220s). It does not change pitch very quickly, since the song is quite slow. The fact that the pitch is mostly E and B and does not change quickly attributes to the low energy in the song.

Chromagram of an average song (loudness): Genie In a Bottle

This chromagram shows the chroma features of Genie In a Bottle by Christina Aguilera. This song is a teen pop and dance-pop song from the 90’s, which incorporates elements from R&B. This song is for loudness very average in the 90’s playlist (-6.945) and has much higher energy than Wicked Game (0.800).

As can be seen in the chromagram, the song is mostly in C#|Db and C key and a litte F (40s - 70s and 100s - 220s). These keys are popular in the corpus, as showed earlier, which makes the song a typical hit for this corpus. It changes pitch quite quickly, which attributes to higher energy than Wicked Game.

Cepstrogram of outlier Wicked Game

Some songs do not use a consistent melody or beat. They often change in the outro or intro, but some songs suddenly contain different parts in the middle. Wicked Game is one of those songs. In this song there is a big beat switch in the sections 20s - 50s, 100s - 110s and 190s - 210s in the c03 component. The rest seems quite consistent.

Conclusion

What can be concluded from this portfolio is that the loudness of the biggest hits have increased over the years, and with it the energy in the songs has also increased. There are some outliers such as ‘Wicked Game’ that were popular but had less energy and loudness compared to more average songs such as ‘Genie In a Bottle’. Most songs that were typical for the playlists were in C, C# or F.